End of the Sixth Cycle

My reservist has officially ended and I am now a Singaporean Son who is free from his military duties for the next 1 year.



Whenever my reservist ends, I always feel a little melancholy. It's really weird because even though reservist has been quite a hindrance, a part of me enjoys having that excuse of being in reservist.




When a client messages me and ask me...

"Hey Tim, we are still awaiting your quote. It has been a few weeks already and we haven't heard from you yet." 

...simply telling them I am currently serving my reservist will always be met with a great deal of understanding and compassion.



Or when the company has a compulsory meeting that I do not want to attend, or an event that I do not want to go to, reservist will always be a valid reason for not showing up. I mean it is extremely valid because there were events and company meetings that were going on during my reservist that I simply could not attend because I was stuck in camp doing sentry duty, but that reason is almost met with some sort of universal understanding from everybody.




So for the past 2 weeks, I have been stuck in camp on and off, doing a lot of sentry duty, most of them were alright, some were pretty shit but overall, it could've been a lot worst. Got my hands on 200GB of Mobile Data for my 2 weeks in camp and it was pretty awesome knowing that I could watch as many Youtube videos as I wanted without having to worry about Singtel charging me an exuberant amount of money for exceeding my data.




The shitty thing is because of how low the manpower was, I didn't have a lot of opportunities to actually relax in bunk and stream Youtube videos to watch, everyone was pretty much doing close to the maximum capacity, so after every 6 hour duty ended, I will have 6 hours of rest before having to do another 6 hours of duty, and it just went on and on and on, it was honestly pretty insane and I just feel really bad for the active soldiers for having to endure this because for me, it's only 2 weeks, but for them, it is months and months of barely enough sleep.



Hopefully by the time I get called up again next year, the army would have sorted out their manpower issue because it is really ridiculous how everyone was stretched so thin, I mean even the sergeants had to step in to compensate for the lack of manpower, it was fucking nuts and I actually ended up doing one of my midnight duty with a sergeant whom I was initially a little skeptical of because he actually raised his voice at me once for reasons, but then we ended up having a really good chat about horror happenings in camp for 2 hours during our duty together, and oddly enough, I actually enjoy getting spooked in camp with this horror stories.




He shared with me stories about how a bunch of soldiers had seen a female figure on multiple occasions at this particular area in the camp and I remember having to cycle pass that particular area multiple times before at night to open a gate that was located at the deeper part of the camp. I would always look down whenever I had to cycle through that area at night because of how freaky it was, the route is completely forested and there is literally no natural light streaming in at night, everything is pitch black and all I could see was maybe 2 to 3 meters of road ahead of me that was illuminated by the bicycle lamp. To think that there have been multiple sightings in that area send shivers down my spine because I have cycled through that area multiple times before in the dark, always looking down and keeping my eyes on the ground, because if there is a figure in the forest, ignorance is bliss.




But aside from that horror story sharing session, nothing too memorable happened in camp. I did end up doing duty with one active soldier whom I did duty with last year, was surprised he actually remembered me, I had a good chat with him as well, and it was nice to actually be able to see a familiar face in the pool of active soldiers.




Well, today was the final day and everyone had to report to Punggol SAFRA to Out Pro, we played darts and had a pretty crappy lunch, I played 2 rounds of Mobile Legends with my friends and it was such a waste that we only started playing that game together on the last day because for the last 2 weeks, we have only been playing this game called Brawl Stars and as exciting as it was in the beginning, it got boring really quickly and we didn't play it as much after.





After the award presentation in which I did not manage to get awarded for anything, we were allowed to leave and the very first thing I did after was visit my job sites.





All my clients will be dropping by their respective sites tomorrow to check up on progress and also do some shit they as homeowners have to do, so I had to drop by today to make sure everything is in proper order for their arrival, like making sure there aren't any cigarettes butts lying in the house, and most importantly, that the contractor did come down to actually do the things I told them to do, because the less issues I have to deal with tomorrow, the better. Will be meeting up with 2 groups tomorrow and sly fox is one of them.






His place is pretty much done, it has been thoroughly cleaned, all the rubbish has been cleared, I am really really hoping that everything goes well tomorrow and I can finally hand the project over to him officially and be rid of it forever, he also wants the project to be done because I had originally estimated the entire renovation to be completed in mid August and it's already 3 weeks past that. The place looks really clean when I popped by just now, the floors are no longer covered in a layer of dust and I can finally step into the house without my shoes on.





After this week, I will officially have to go back to work again, which means reporting back to the office for my showroom duty. Honestly do not have the mood to do my duty anymore, not because I am losing interest in the job, I mean that is partly reason why, but also because I was recently transferred to another group, so now, I am actually doing my showroom duty with a bunch of guys I don't talk to, who also don't talk to me, it feels pointless to even show up anymore because back then, even if I am not serving any potential walk in customers, at least I still had a bunch of colleagues I could talk to, my reason for showing up was to talk to my colleagues, but now, I am showing up to work just for the sake of showing up, I don't want to serve any walk in customers, so I end up just sitting at the back and watching Youtube videos until the office closes.




I'm trying really hard to look for a new job right now, but I can't seem to find any suitable ones, so that is a little troubling for me. That being said, I am quite interested to try and receive one more customer, a simple one, maybe a BTO, and actually try preparing a design proposal based on how an Interior Designer would, so far, all my design proposals are very uninspiring, just Sketch Up drawings with zero creativity, I want to try coming up with a mood board and go all the way and see how that works out, be a designer and not a contractor.

Have been getting really inspired by this Interior Designer lately.

No offence to my colleagues at work, but none of them are Interior Designers, and that includes myself, I don't see myself as a designer, I see myself more as an interior contractors. The work we have been churning out have been really boring and I really don't get inspired when I see their final results, sometimes I even question a customer's taste when they tell me...

"Yeah, we saw your company's portfolio online and we really like the designs."

... we do have some decent designs, but they are really nothing amazing, and majority of our normal works are very cookie cutter and boring, so when a customer tells me they like our designs, I just automatically assume they have very bland taste.



I mean just the way the Youtuber does her presentation, I can hear the passion she has for the craft, she isn't doing it just for the money, she actually loves Interior Design, and sadly, the same can't be said for a lot of my colleagues because ultimately, we are Sales Designer, keyword being "Sales", everything is about the money. No doubt all of us have an interest in Interior Design, but it is definitely not in the same magnitude as the Youtuber, which I just find very infectious.